Friday, May 23, 2014

Feel free to download and print the Parasha sheet and share it
with your friends and family: Click here: Parashat Bamidbar

In parashat Bamidbar,
the Torah tells us just how to construct a community that has God and Torah
at its center. God's command, "They shall make for Me a Sanctuary and I
will dwell in their midst" (Shemot 25:8) - is now given true shape as
the Children of Israel depart from the Mount Sinai and begin to move and
settle as a camp, as a community. The Sanctuary, God's presence, lives in the
center of the camp, and the tribes are arranged, each with its distinct
position, each with its banner, around the Sanctuary.

What we learn, first of all, is
that even when we depart Mount Sinai, when we engage in the wide range of activities
that is our encounter with the world, we must always remain oriented
towards God and God's presence in our midst. Whether
encamped or marching, whether our lives are stable or in transition, we
must always strive to direct our actions towards serving God. We must
realize that to describe where we are in life, where we are encamped, is to
describe where we are in relationship to the goals of kedusha and
in relationship to God. But we also learn that to have God in our
midst, we do not need to ever enter the Temple, it is the orientation that is
critical. Some people will seek to enter the Temple on a regular basis,
others may only enter in once a year, or perhaps never, but each one of these
people can have God in his or her midst.

We further learn that to be one
people is not to be a homogenous mass; that unity is not to be confused with
uniformity. True unity, creating a bonded, cohesive community, comes
from respecting differences - "each person on his banner," each
tribe with its own uniqueness, its own distinctiveness preserved. Some
are on the left, some on the right, some North, some South. What held
them together was a shared commitment to respect each other's boundaries, to
value their distinctive banners, their diversity, and to exist together as
one people with a shared orientation towards God's presence in their midst.

The final lesson is one of
accessibility. True, a small number of impure people were temporarily
excluded from the Sanctuary during their period of impurity, and the Levites
comprised the innermost ring around the Sanctuary. Nevertheless, any person
had the ability to enter the Levite camp and to even enter the Sanctuary
itself. All the people participated in the making of the Sanctuary and
all the people had access to it and a part in it.

Not only was the Sanctuary
accessible, but the leadership was as well. Moses' tent was no longer
outside of the camp, but in the very center of it, open to all who would
come. Only in such a camp, where every individual understood that he
and she counted, that they had a right to engage and a right to be heard,
could those who were impure say to Moshe, "Why should we be excluded
from bringing God's sacrifice in its appointed time?" (Bamidbar
9:7). Only in such a camp could the daughters of Tzelafchad approach
Moshe and say, "Why should our father's name be excluded from his
family, because he has no son? Give us a portion together with the
brothers of our father!" (Bamidbar 27:4). Only in such a
camp could inclusion be assumed, and could exclusion be rightfully seen as a
profound affront. And only in a camp led by a true leader such as
Moshe would the response be not condemnation and silencing, but a humble
bringing of these just concerns before God.

This is the model of a camp
with God at its center. This must be our model of a Jewish
community. To build such a community we need a laity that
embraces these values. To build such a community we need leaders who
embody these values.

A leadership that embodies
these values is an accessible leadership. It is a leadership that
believes in unity through diversity, not through sameness. It is a
leadership that is committed to ensuring that all are included, that no one
is rejected or left outside the camp.

Sadly, there are those in
positions of rabbinic leadership today who do not share this vision.
There are those who believe that the only Jews who count are those who act
within a narrow definition, a definition that is getting narrower each day.
Such is a leadership that is fearful of diversity, which believes that unity
can come only if all Jews act and believe in exactly the same way - their
way.

The leadership that should be
our standard is of a different sort. It is a leadership spreads God's Torah
and its teachings in a way that teaches respect for all Jews. It
is a leadership that teaches that even Jews who never enter the Sanctuary can
have God in their midst, can orient their lives in the camp towards God in
ways that are less obvious and less ritualistic. It is a
leadership that values and respects difference and diversity, and believes
that we are enriched by it. In a world where small-mindedness and
intolerance is rife, in a world where Jewish identity and shared values are
elusive concepts, it is no small matter for a community to embrace this
alternate vision. And to ask a leader, a rabbi, to help shape and
create such a community may seem like asking the impossible. But in the
striving to achieve this vision, we will do much to transform the Jewish
community and our respect for one another.

Building on the foundation of
diversity and respect, we will create welcoming and accessible communities -
communities that build bridges rather than walls, communities that reach out
to those who are marginalized and those who have been excluded. It
will be a community that believes that any Jew- regardless of
denomination, background, observance, sexual orientation, color of their
skin, whether sighted or blind, mobile or wheelchair bound, neurotypical
or with special needs - that any and every Jew has a fundamental right to be
included, to find his or her place in our camp. It will be a community
that is exquisitely attuned to the verbalized and non-verbalized cry of
"why should I be excluded?!" and that will remove any
obstacle and create any accommodation to ensure that every one is present,
that everyone is valued.

And it is a community whose
leadership is accessible, humble, and responsive. At a time when
rabbinic leadership is, as a whole, becoming more authoritarian and
unbending, the leadership that we most desperately need is one that has pride
for the Torah and the tradition that it represents, but that is also humble
and accessible, one that seeks participation and collaboration. What is
needed is leaders who can admit their mistakes, and who can learn from
them. And such leaders, in the end, are loved and respected all the
more.

It is this type of camp, this
type of community, and the leadership that is required to create it that will
truly fulfill God's command: "They shall make for Me a Sanctuary, that I
may dwell in their midst."

Our
school year draws to close, and students are busy doing chazara and completing
their final assignments. First-year students continued with their
year-end Modern Orthodoxy presentations, covering the topics of
"Transgender Issues in Halakha," Hallel on Yom HaAtzmaut - Responsa
and Contemporary Practices", "Modern or Post-Modern Orthodoxy?",
and "Talmud Education in Modern Orthodox High Schools: Goals and
Practices". The presentations have been a wonderful way
for students to explore the issues that are of high interest and relevance for
them, and to bring to these topics a range of different disciplines and
perspectives. We look forward to the final series of presentations next
week.

Also this week, third- and
fourth-year students had as their final project for their Lifecycles, a series
of role-plays around halakhic and pastoral issues connected to dying, burial,
and shiva. I reached out to our musmachim for the most interesting questions
they have received in this area. We used 7 of them, and we are keeping
all of them in a database for future and ongoing use with our students.
The ones that were addressed this week in the final role-plays were:
Burial of an army veteran in an military cemetery; mourners who only want to
tear a ribbon, have an open casket, and place items in the grave; having a
non-Jew involved in the burial, or as a pallbearer; a congregant who asks
about doing kriya, walking in the shura, and saying kaddish for a gay
partner; responding to an avel who asks about coming to shul during
shiva, if he regularly drives to shul on Shabbos; and how to direct mourners
who do not want to do any of the shoveling themselves.

We find that dealing with these
real-life questions is a powerful way to prepare them to deal with the
complexities of the situations they will encounter in real-life as future
rabbonim. The more we can grow our database of questions, and the more
that students will write teshuvot on these issues, the better we and they will
be able to serve Klal Yisrael.

We have many Mazal Tovs this
week! Mazal Tov to Jamie and Rabbi Seth Braunstein (YCT 2006) on
the birth of a baby boy this week, on Lag Ba'omer! Mazal tov to Devorah
and Rabbi Avidan Friedman (YCT 2007) on the birth of a baby boy last week
and the bris this week, who was named Amihud Tzvi Nezach. And Mazal Tov
to Michal and Rabbi Aryeh Leifert (YCT 2006) on the birth of a baby boy last
week and the bris this week, who was named Reuven Nachum. To each of them
we say, Shetizku li'gadlo li'Torah li'chuppah u'li'ma'asim tovim. Mazal Tov, mazal tov!